Re: :Weird mysterious ineffable stuff

John Clark (jonkc@worldnet.att.net)
Mon, 20 Sep 1999 02:02:14 -0400

Eliezer S. Yudkowsky <sentience@pobox.com> Wrote:

>it's probably necessary on a low level for some computations, and
>on a high level for qualia, but not intrinsically necessary to intelligence

That does not compute. We know qualia exists, or rather, I know that at least one example of it does, it must have come about somehow. If the weird mysterious ineffable stuff was not necessary for intelligence then Evolution would have no way of producing it. We may value our internal states but to Evolution it's a byproduct, behavior is the only thing that's important. Even if we were insanely lucky and we got this weird mysterious ineffable stuff by pure chance genetic drift would soon make it vanish, and anything else that's irrelevant to survival too, just like the eyes of fish that lived in dark caves for thousands of generations.

Your only way out is to argue that it just provides a short cut to intelligence that could be produced in other more complicated ways, but that would mean it's easier to make a AI that experiences qualia than one that doesn't. I don't see any need for weird mysterious ineffable stuff.

John K Clark jonkc@att.net